Electromagnetic fields - Campi elettromagnetici

Activity in the area of electromagnetic fields is divided into the following areas:

Microwave Filters - Innovative filter configurations have been developed with the goal of reducing size and mass for on-board satellite applications. This includes new waveguide filters, advanced planar filters, dielectric resonator filters and micromachined miniaturized filter. Specific attention has also been devoted to tunable filters.

Remote Sensing - The Remote Sensing activities are mainly focused on the development of microwave techniques for the retrieval of atmospheric parameters useful for propagation studies and for environmental diagnostic tools, and on multispectral data analysis of spaceborne systems for Earth Observation.

Antennas - Research activity is mainly focused on electronically scanning or reconfigurable antennas for various applications. Specific attention has been devoted to reflectarray antennas using RF MEMS as tuning elements to reconfigure or scan the beam for application up to 77GHz.

RF MEMS - In collaboration with FBK, which has developed an advanced 8-mask fabrication process and provides the MEMS foundry, several MEMS devices have been developed in the last years, from various types of SPST to SP8T, switching matrices, digital phase shifters and several tunable circuits have been conceived and developed.

Wireless Power Transfer - This new research theme is developing in the recent years and gives new and exciting research themes. It spans from automotive wireless recharging to tiny sensors powering. Large experience has been achieved in wireless resonant power transfer using coupled resonators. Different resonators and charging electronics have been designed and prototyped.

Sensors - A large experience has been achieved in the modelling, design and manufacturing of several industrial microwave sensors for moisture, density, and weight, applied in several industrial environments. Recently new industrial applications have been developed for the accurate measurement of RF conductivity and for the reflectometric detection of oil pipeline defects.

Ultra-compact waveguide bandpass filters will be key elements in future satellite telecommunication systems. In spite of the excellent performance in terms of loss and power handling, size and mass are well known drawbacks of waveguide-based filters. Therefore, many efforts have been devoted to reduce the size of waveguide filters.Our research goal is to reduce the mass and size of such filters by the adoption of a TM dual-mode cavity loaded with a high-permittivity cylinder.

Reliability is a major issue for any satellite since it is almost impossible to envisage any repair work during the full mission lifetime e.g. 15 years for today’s telecommunications satellites. Redundancy is implemented in order to reduce the failure rate of equipment.For this purpose, high reliability switches is of greatest importance for RF equipment incorporating redundancy schemes. Electrostatic RF MEMS show great potentialities for space; still their reliability is hampered by different failure mechanisms. Dielectric charging has been identified as the main failure mechanism for redundancy switches, where the switches are required to be kept activated (i.e. polarized with continuous voltage) for long time.